Bill Clinton’s Secretary Of Defense Likes Trump’s North Korea Strategy

HUFFINGTON POST


President Donald Trump’s strategy of threatening North Korea could set “the stage for successful diplomacy” to limit the hermit nation’s nuclear program, William J. Perry, Bill Clinton’s second secretary of defense, told The Huffington Post in an interview.

Perry, who endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, has been advising presidents on nuclear activity since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. A mathematician by trade, he has devoted much of his time since his government work to nuclear disarmament through the William J. Perry Project, a nonprofit he founded....[He argues that] the U.S. needs to be seen as a credible threat to North Korea for diplomacy to be an option.

 By sending North Korea a message that a military strike is indeed on the table, Trump could create an environment where diplomacy might be possible — and limit the cooperation between the country and China.
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The first step to a successful North Korea strategy is leading the country to “believe that we’re serious about military action,” Perry said. “They did not believe that during the Obama or the Bush administrations. They believe it now.”

“We have never been able to get China to cooperate with us in the past, but China now is fully convinced that North Korea’s action is posing dangers to their own security.”

The facts on the ground have also changed. For many years, China didn’t think Pyongyang was capable of building a sizable nuclear arsenal, Perry noted. “That was wrong,” he said.

“In addition, North Korean aggression could propel South Korea and Japan to build their own nuclear weapons,” he said, “which would be very undesirable to [China].”

China is responsible for so much of North Korea’s economy ― it is North Korea’s largest trade partner, and 90 percent of North Korean oil imports come from China ― that any Chinese pressure could bring results, Perry said. 

President Trump with President Xi Jinping of China at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., this month. The Trump administration has urged Mr. Xi to exert greater pressure on North Korea.Credit  Doug Mills/The New York Times

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North Korean leaders are rational enough to respond to Chinese pressure, Perry argued: They may be reckless, but they are shrewd. “They’ve taken a very weak hand and they’ve played it very shrewdly,” he said. “Their objective was to sustain their regime and they have succeeded, and they think that their nuclear program has played a big role.”

Read more at HUFFINGTON POST

Trump’s Wisconsin win was an aftershock of the Great Recession.

WASHINGTON POST

Donald Trump won significantly more votes than Paul Ryan in the House Speaker’s home county last fall, partly by making inroads with traditionally Democratic autoworkers who have struggled to adjust since losing their jobs when the General Motors plant in Janesville, Wisconsin, closed in 2008.

-- The president is traveling to Ryan’s congressional district this afternoon for an event at Snap-on, which manufactures hand tools. Trying to show his blue-collar base that he’s following through on his promises, Trump will sign a “Buy American, Hire American” executive order. The White House says it will make it harder for tech companies to replace American workers with cheaper foreign labor and strengthen rules barring foreign contractors from bidding on government projects. (More details here.)

-- Today also happens to be the publication date for Amy Goldstein’s terrific new book, “Janesville: An American Story.” It is a close-up look at what happened after G.M. shut down the assembly line two days before Christmas, as the company sought to survive and the country tried to fend off another depression. In a city of 63,000, as many as nine thousand people lost their jobs.

Amy, a staff writer at The Washington Post for three decades, has doggedly pursued this project for six years now. She took a two-year leave from the paper to conduct research, immersing herself in the lives of a handful of people in the community. With 55 vignettes, some as short as a page, she weaves a powerful narrative about their struggles and their perseverance from 2008 to 2013. Throughout the story, as she writes at one point, “The carcass of a 4.8-million-square-foot cathedral of industry still sits in silence on the river’s edge.” 

(Read an excerpt about three of the families she followed here.)

Paul Ryan gave then President-elect Trump a Green Bay Packers jersey during a "thank you" rally last December in West Allis, Wis. (Morry Gash/AP)

-- Trump’s name does not appear until page 292 of “Janesville,” but this really is one of the best books to understand how he could become the first Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan to carry the Badger State.

To this day, most Washington elites don’t fully grasp just how painful the Great Recession was for tens of millions of Americans. Government spending increased, and the military-industrial complex prospered, so D.C. denizens were mostly insulated from the economic crisis.

-- Importantly, Janesville is not part of the Rust Belt. Places like Youngstown, Ohio, and Pittsburgh have been decaying for decades. But this area was faring relatively well until the 2000s. Generations of Janesville kids, going back to 1923, grew up excited to follow their dads onto the assembly line so they too could make Chevys. They saw a union card, not a college degree, as the ticket to a respectable middle-class livelihood.

-- Trump’s name does not appear until page 292 of “Janesville,” but this really is one of the best books to understand how he could become the first Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan to carry the Badger State.

To this day, most Washington elites don’t fully grasp just how painful the Great Recession was for tens of millions of Americans. Government spending increased, and the military-industrial complex prospered, so D.C. denizens were mostly insulated from the economic crisis.

-- Importantly, Janesville is not part of the Rust Belt. Places like Youngstown, Ohio, and Pittsburgh have been decaying for decades. But this area was faring relatively well until the 2000s. Generations of Janesville kids, going back to 1923, grew up excited to follow their dads onto the assembly line so they too could make Chevys. They saw a union card, not a college degree, as the ticket to a respectable middle-class livelihood.

Ryan, who refused to campaign with or defend Trump after the “Access Hollywood” tape came out last October, will miss Trump’s event in Kenosha today. He’s leading a congressional delegation in Europe, focused on reassuring NATO allies about the U.S. commitment to the alliance.

This is in the parking lot outside the UAW local in Janesville. (Alyssa Schukar for The Washington Post)

-- In many ways, the town is a useful microcosm to understand the broader trends Trump capitalized on:

Union power has dramatically dissipated. The United Auto Workers local shrank from 7,000 active members to 438 by 2012, with 4,900 retirees. To make money, the union started renting out its hall – once a heart of the community. A major festival over Labor Day weekend has gotten smaller. In 2014, Labor Fest went from three days to two. Then it was canceled altogether in 2015 on short notice. It managed to resume in 2016, but the future is precarious.

The civil war in Wisconsin after Scott Walker took on public employee unions also divided Janesville. Some of the civility that the town had really prided itself on was lost during the recall fight in 2012.

Jobs have finally come back to Janesville, but they don’t pay as well. And they’re not in manufacturing. The unemployment rate recently slipped below 4 percent, but many who are working again are not earning enough for the comfortable lives they had a decade ago. Rock County had about 9,500 manufacturing jobs in 2015 – about half as many as in 1990.

Dollar General decided to put a distribution center on the south side of town, thanks to generous incentives offered by the city. But most of the jobs will pay $15 an hour – compared to the $28 a lot of guys earned at GM before the plant closed. But people will take what they can get: A Dollar General job fair not long before Amy’s book went to press drew three thousand people.

Many folks who lost jobs never fully regained their confidence. Working with the University of Wisconsin Survey Center, Amy conducted a major survey of Rock County residents. She includes the results in an eight-page appendix: More than one in three who responded had lost work or lived with someone who had. Economic pessimism lingered years after the recession itself. Attesting to the financial and emotional pain that losing work caused people, half said they have had trouble paying for food and nearly two-thirds reported strain in family relationships. Three-quarters of the people who responded, in 2013, said that the U.S. economy was still in a recession. Slightly more than half said their financial situation was worse than before the recession. (Buy Amy’s book here.)

 (Photo by Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)

ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN:

-- New York Magazine, “Steve Bannon’s Biblical Fall,” by Olivia Nuzzi: “Media reports have not been subtle in characterizing Bannon’s political future. The New York Times branded him ‘doomed’ while Politico planned his funeral. … But as with all things Trump, the truth may be at once less and more predictable than that. ‘You’re always up and down with Trump,’ another source said. ‘There’s always gonna be a favorite.’ White House sources tell me the ideological split with (Jared) Kushner is real but not quite the point — Bannon’s primary ‘gunfight’ is with economic adviser Gary Cohn … whose influence has ballooned as Bannon has fallen out of favor with the president. The Goldman Sachs alums … can comfortably ‘shoot the [breeze]’ but mutual suspicion looms beneath the superficial friendliness. ‘Look, in all honesty? Steve has said things to me about Gary,’ [said a source close to Bannon]. ‘He’s never said one thing to me derogatory about Jared.'"

“The president has started his love affair with Gary,” another source said, “Gary’s not aware of this: That love affair will end abruptly. Gary Cohn will step on a landmine.”

Many sources believe Bannon’s “fatal mistake” was choosing to stay out of early, top-tier hiring disputes, focusing instead on his big picture, anti-globalist agenda. But now Bannon stands alone — a self-styled radical seated at the table with ideological opponents Kushner and Cohn, who haven’t similarly been blamed for the turmoil of the first 100 days. Even White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, a natural ally to Bannon, has been working more closely with Kushner recently, a source said.

Trump is “both prone to nostalgia” and also “deeply unsentimental”: “You could play golf with this guy for 40 years, have a heart attack on the ninth hole, he’ll pick up a new golf partner on the tenth hole like nothing happened,” one official said, adding: “As soon as you think you’re in Trump’s good graces and you start to be at ease and take that for granted, that’s when you get annihilated.”

North Korea’s show of force falls short after failed missile launch

The attempted launch of a missile — which blew up almost immediately, the U.S. military said — followed a dizzying display of North Korea’s weaponry during a military parade honoring the birth of the state’s founder. But despite the failed launch, the arsenal illustrated Kim Jong Un’s resolve to develop a missile capable of reaching the United States. The timing of the failed ballistic missile launch was an embarrassment for Kim Jong-un, because it appeared to have been intended to coincide with the approach of a fleet of American warships.

Weapons experts pore over Pyongyang’s jaw-dropping display of missiles

Analysts were stunned by the range of apparently new missiles on display, and the sheer number of them. 

Inside Bannon’s struggle: From ‘shadow president’ to a marked man

The president’s chief strategist, who was publicly debased by his boss during an interview Tuesday, is struggling to keep his job, with a reduced portfolio and a damaged profile.

By Philip Rucker, Ashley Parker and Robert Costa  •  Read more »

Bomb First.

What the fawning response to the bombing of Syria says about our political culture.


NY REVIEW OF BOOKS

Trump administration moving quickly to build up nationwide deportation force An internal Department of Homeland Security assessment obtained by The Post shows the agency has already found 33,000 more beds to house undocumented immigrants in detention centers, opened discussions with dozens of local police forces and identified where construction of Trump’s border wall could begin. But costs are prohibitive. By David Nakamura  •  Read more »

The Twitter mob serves a purpose. Bill O’Reilly and United prove it.

KATHLEEN PARKER, WASHINGTON POST

No One to Blame But Trump

Kevin Lamarque/Reuters

Elizabeth Drew

 NY REVIEW OF BOOKS

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There’s been a great deal of speculation about shifting alliances among Trump’s White House staff—it’s virtually a daily exercise—but in the end Donald Trump defines his administration. Trump has a mediocre staff, whom he doesn’t treat well. They’re hesitant to give him news he won’t like for fear of being screamed at, a frequent event. Experienced potential aides haven’t been keen to work in a Trump White House and though it’s not widely known by the outside world many of those who are there are unhappy. As one close observer put it to me, “They came to work for the president but found themselves working for Donald Trump.” The moody man at the top is strongly affected by what’s in the news. But so far only one significant aide has seen fit to quit, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus’s deputy Katie Walsh; while some reporters described her departure as part of a White House “shakeup,” it’s more likely that Walsh left because she couldn’t stand the unpleasantness of working for Trump. According to reports, with things not going well for him, the atmosphere in Trump’s White House has grown progressively worse.... 

Yet despite the weakness and disorder of the president’s staff, and though previous White House staffs have tried it (if not as thoroughly but without success), Trump and his top aides seem particularly determined to hold power throughout the government. This is why even more than halfway into the first hundred days most of the Cabinet officers are home alone. It’s not accidental that few of them have a deputy, not to mention the legally established complement of assistant secretaries and deputy assistant secretaries—some 550 appointments the president makes and the Senate confirms. As of now, Defense Secretary James Mattis is the only newly confirmed official in the entire Pentagon leviathan, but the wars he has to fight and the crises he has to try to avert won’t wait until he gets his own staff. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is also without a deputy, the one he wanted having been vetoed by Trump because he’d criticized him during the primaries. Such a consideration would rule out a great many potential presidential appointees. Tillerson is another tycoon who is more than a little lost in government. The generals whom Trump has appointed (three of them) are more accustomed to a political atmosphere and to dealing with elected politicians. This is no guarantee of success but they do tend to be less bewildered in their new positions of power....

Yet the thinness of the ranks of officials to propose and implement the laws is actually also how Trump and his top aides want it. “A lot of those jobs, I don’t want to appoint someone because they’re unnecessary to have,” Trump said in late February. “In government, we have too many people.” Trump, Bannon, and son-in-law Jared Kushner have been particularly keen to keep control of the government in the White House. Kushner now has more assignments than any single figure known of in a modern White House and shows no inclination to devolve power. These people may well be taking on the impossible, and this would be true even if they’d had any government experience....

 Kushner is in over his head. But Trump, as inexperienced in government as his son-in-law is, does not seem to realize that, and so he keeps loading new responsibilities on him, apparently as the only person inside the White House he’s been able to trust. Ivanka is of course a trusted and cherished daughter, who has just officially become a presidential adviser. This odd arrangement would raise more hackles if it weren’t that people see Ivanka and Jared as calming influences on the president. Since they haven’t completely cut themselves off from some of their former sources of income the possibilities for conflict of interest—for which, unlike the president, they’re not legally exempt—are rife.



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That Trump announced a rollback of environmental regulations adopted by Barack Obama is probably the least surprising thing he’s done as president. Climate change has been eliminated not only as a consideration in formulating policy but even as a term that can appear in official government documents and websites. But while Trump’s proposals pleased the merchants of the extraction industries and many other private businesses, and outraged environmentalists, they may turn out to be far less effective than it first appeared.

Sheldon Whitehouse, senator from Rhode Island, who has given a speech on the environment every Monday that the Senate’s in session—he has given more than a hundred thus far—told me, “We have to be on our guard against Trump’s instincts to please polluting industries, but because of his limited grasp of things, he won’t achieve what he thinks. He doesn’t grasp the economics of what natural gas is doing to coal mining jobs in Appalachia. He doesn’t grasp how courts require administrative agencies to adhere to fact and law.” And, according to Whitehouse, in eschewing the environmental movement’s achievements and goals, Trump is bringing onto himself a political problem: “He also doesn’t appear to grasp that America is not on his side as he sells out the environment to big donors.”

It was widely understood, even by the happy coal mine operators present at Trump’s announcement of his deregulations, that so much has happened in the development of cleaner fuels that coal mining jobs aren’t coming back in any significant number. But Trump has led unemployed coal miners in Appalachia—which contains two crucial electoral states, Pennsylvania and Ohio, both of which Trump carried—to believe that they will.

This is a pattern that might cause Trump a great deal of trouble over time. Coal miners aren’t the only disenchanted working class voters to whom Trump addressed his campaign. He led a great many unemployed and underemployed people in depressed industrial areas to believe that he could get their jobs back.

But despite the relative success of Trump’s early flim-flam about saving some jobs at a few plants—never to the extent that he claimed—companies are again showing no compunction about relocating to Mexico. He misdiagnosed the cause of job losses as being the result of trade deals that he says cheated the US, when in fact the much larger problem is that the jobs are obsolete; even if, as he kept promising, he could get other countries to yield the US more in those deals, he’s not going to produce any significant number of new jobs that way. And then his budget cut funds for training for other kinds of jobs. That’s the thing: though he campaigned with the rhetoric of a champion of the displaced and angry middle class, his policies would make their situation worse....

Carlo Allegri/Reuters

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When the subject comes up, as it does incessantly in Washington, of whether in fact Trump will end up serving as president for four years, a major argument against his somehow having to leave office (for reasons other than health) is that he has a strong base. Richard Nixon also did, until he didn’t. Gradually, Nixon’s onetime backers became disenchanted for one reason or another; he still had support at the end, but it wasn’t strong enough to save him. How long will Trump’s base stick with him even in the face of seeing their hopes betrayed? This isn’t a fanciful question: a recent poll by Geoffrey Garin for Priorities USA, showed a ten-point drop in support among Trump voters in the third week in March (the week the health care bill failed).

.... The discontent with Donald Trump on Capitol Hill runs very deep and also very wide. I’ve been told that upwards of two-thirds of the Senate Republicans, in particular, discuss—in the gym and in clusters on the Senate floor—their desire to see him gone. These senators talk rather openly—even with their Democratic colleagues—about their fear of Trump’s recklessly getting the country into serious danger, about the embarrassment he causes it in the world (his petulantly refusing to shake hands with Angela Merkel was just one example of his mishandling of foreign leaders), about his overall incompetence.

Whether or not anything is ever proved, most members of Congress, including Republicans, think something was amiss in the Trump campaign’s relationship with Russia, or Russians, including plutocrats who owe much to Vladimir Putin. No one thinks that FBI Director Comey would have opened, much less announced, a counter-intelligence investigation of the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with the Russian government in its attempt to sway the election if he didn’t have serious evidence. On the Senate floor the other day, a cluster of Republicans jocularly made a betting pool on the way in which they think Trump will be forced to leave office.

April 5, 2017, 8:52 pm

ENOUGH ABOUT SYRIA. LET'S TALK ABOUT NO. KOREA. UGH!

• Last week, North Korea launched a medium-range missile — the latest in a series of “saber-rattling” demonstrations of the country’s military capability, which some nuclear observers feel could be leading up to a sixth nuclear test. [Wired / Eric Niiler]
• The Trump administration responded by sending a US aircraft carrier into North Korean waters on Sunday, in what wasn’t explicitly called, but was agreed by all to be, a show of force to deter the country from going any further in its tests. [NPR / Philip Ewing]
• But while Trump’s move was, if anything, less aggressive than his strike against Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, North Korea is better equipped to strike back than Syria. And on Tuesday, North Korean state media threatened the carrier — and warned of nuclear retaliation if the US didn’t stand down. [Reuters]
• Both sides are posturing right now, but they’re also raising the stakes.... 
• [The most important variable could be whether China threatens the North Koreans with economic penalties — something President Trump is attempting to encourage, promising (on Twitter, of course) a more favorable trade deal in exchange for China’s “help” with the rogue nation-Esco.]  [NYT / Mark Landler]
• Belligerence aside, experts assume that the US response to North Korea’s latest provocations [will be] another round of economic sanctions — perhaps even a “dragnet” that would prohibit any companies in the US financial system from doing any business with the North Korean government (or companies that do business with that government). [USA Today / Oren Dorell]
• But if there’s one thing we’ve learned about the Trump administration’s foreign policy, it’s that it’s unpredictable. To some extent, that’s by design. But to some extent, it’s accidental — the function of a president who, for example, comes into meetings and waits for the other person to tell him what the agenda is. [Washington Post / Kevin Sullivan and Karen Tumulty​]

TRUMP’S WIN-LOSE-LOSE STRIKE ON SYRIA

WIN: Trump Just Yanked the Russia Card Right out of Democrats’ Hands — CNBC

The political context of all this cannot be ignored. The missile strike came at a moment when Trump had record-low approval ratings, while many Democrats were accusing him of being a Russian stooge. Prior to this week, he had expressed little public concern about the victims of Assad’s brutality, and had seemed content to let the Syrian leader crush the remaining resistance to him, with Russian assistance. By launching the attack, he has shaken up the domestic political environment, as well as the geopolitical one. “Because from now on, the narrative that the president is some kind of puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin is going to be much harder to promote,” Jake Novak, a columnist at CNBC.com, wrote on Friday. Given Trump’s gushing statements about Putin in the past, and the ongoing F.B.I. investigation into possible connections between Russia and some of Trump’s associates, this is a tendentious interpretation, to say the least. But in the coming days it is an argument that the White House and its Republican allies will be eager to promote.

   A LONG GAME IS A LOSING GAME                                                     

 STEVE COLL, NEW YORKER


On August 7, 1998, Al Qaeda suicide bombers struck two U.S. embassies in East Africa, killing two hundred and twenty-four people, most of them Africans. Two weeks later, President Bill Clinton launched Operation Infinite Reach, a fusillade of cruise missiles aimed at a reported Al Qaeda meeting in Afghanistan, and at a factory in Sudan, which was suspected of involvement with chemical weapons. “There will be no sanctuary for terrorists,” Clinton declared. The retaliation produced few tangible benefits. And yet, since then, from Kosovo to Waziristan to Libya, the United States has repeatedly threatened or carried out missile and drone attacks and air strikes for limited and sometimes imprecise purposes. In the modern Presidency, firing off missiles has become a rite of passage.

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Syria’s civil war is the worst geopolitical disaster of the twenty-first century. It has claimed at least four hundred and seventy thousand lives; prompted a refugee crisis that has destabilized European politics and fuelled the rise of nativist populism; and created a playing field for Russian and Iranian adventurism in the Middle East. Six years of efforts to end the war through diplomacy have failed. The interference of regional and global powers, combined with the fragmentation of militias and guerrillas on the battlefield, have made the conflict appear all but unresolvable. During the past year, the more mainstream rebels opposing Assad have suffered repeated setbacks, including the loss of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city.

Why, then, would the Trump Administration want to lob a few dozen cruise missiles into this splintered landscape? One limited rationale might be that Syria’s conflict has eroded global treaties banning the use of chemical arms—every time Assad gasses civilians, he increases the likelihood that another dictator or general will use them. It seems odd, though, to initiate armed intervention to prevent one sort of Syrian war crime but not others. Assad has tortured and executed thousands of his own people. Syrian and Russian forces routinely violate international law by targeting civilians, physicians, and rescue workers with bombs and artillery shells. And, if Trump has suddenly been moved to address the suffering, he might start recognizing the legitimacy of Syrians as refugees of war and welcoming them to resettle in the United States.

If President Trump broadens his aims against Assad, to establish civilian safe havens, for example, or to ground Syria’s Air Force, or to bomb Assad to the negotiating table, he will enter the very morass that Candidate Trump warned against. He would have to manage risks—military confrontation with Russia, an intensified refugee crisis, a loss of momentum against isis—that Obama studied at great length and concluded to be unmanageable, at least at a cost consistent with American interests.

Since the Cold War’s end, the United States has led or joined more than half a dozen wars or armed interventions lasting longer than a few months, including the ouster of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, in 1991; the conflicts in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo; the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11; and, in 2011, during the Arab uprisings, the removal of the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. A few of these wars achieved their aims, albeit at a cost in lives and treasure; others went sideways or turned into disasters, as in Libya, where Obama’s intervention has been followed by six years of chaos, civil war, and the rise of a branch of isis. You don’t need an advanced degree in military history to identify the main lessons: once started, even limited wars upend initial plans and assumptions, violence produces unintended consequences, and conflicts are much easier to begin or escalate than to end.

Read more at STEVE COLL, NEW YORKER



  CIVILIAN KILLINGS BEGET MORE CIVILIAN  KILLINGS        

JUAN COLE, TRUTHDIG

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The Reagan administration shamefully ran interference for six years as Saddam Hussein of Iraq systematically deployed chemical weapons against Iranian troops at the front.  Everyone knew this was going on. 

Iraq used chemical weapons for the same reason that the Syrian army does.  They are deployed to level the playing field in the face of superior manpower on the other side.  Saddam Hussein had a country of 16 million and invaded a country of some 40 million.  US military doctrine of the time was you should only invade at a ratio of 3 to 1.  So Saddam would have needed a country of 120 million to invade Iran.  Needless to say, he lost the war very badly after an initial lightning invasion, since Iran could always over time raise a much bigger army than Saddam could.  Hence the use of mustard gas and sarin gas on Iranian troops at the front.

Some Syrian military units have a chem team in case they face being overwhelmed by a more numerous enemy.  The Syrian army was 300,000 before the war.  It is at most 50,000 now.  That number is not sufficient to control the whole country, though with the help of the Lebanese Hizbullah and Iraqi militias and some Afghans dragooned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, plus vigorous Russian air support, they have been able to fight off the rebels and to take most urban areas.  The small number of troops means that when they fight in a rebel-held territory like Idlib Province, they are tempted to deploy chemical weapons to offset their small numbers.

But it is indiscriminate fire and reckless disregard for innocent life that is the war crime here, and indeed a repeated pattern of war crimes is considered a crime against humanity.

By the way, Russian bombing has often been indiscriminate, but somehow Moscow has skated on war crimes accusations growing out of its heavy-handed role in Syria.

As for those decrying Obama inaction they need to, like, read the news sometime.  For the past several years the US has intervened in Syria in two ways.  President Obama used the Saudis to deliver money and weaponry to some 40 “vetted” groups supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, which is certified as having no ties to al-Qaeda or international extremism.  Except that several of these groups have in fact formed battlefield alliances with al-Qaeda in Syria (was Jabhat al-Nusra, now Jabhat Fateh Sham or the Syrian Conquest Front)...

[Further] the rebel groups committed their own massacres of civilians.
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Trump can’t stop Syria from using poison gas by bombing Damascus.  Since he’s such a good buddy of Russian president Vladimir Putin, maybe he could pressure Putin to have Bashar al-Assad cut it out.

But that somehow the Syria situation can be made better if only Donald J. Trump would stick his fingers into it is a wildly implausible premise.

Read the entire article at JUAN COLE, TRUTHDIG

Senate Confirms Neil Gorsuch to Supreme Court.

The new justice is likely to consider how voting rights should be protected and to weigh in on whether to expand the breadth of the Second Amendment. He may even cast the deciding vote in a major case on the separation of church and state.

Republicans voted to change Senate rules, upending a longstanding tradition by eliminating the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. The move paved the way for Judge Neil Gorsuch to be confirmed on a simple majority vote after what could be some of the most contentious debate in Senate history.

Budget Deal Comes Together in Albany, After Delay and Frustration

NY TIMES

Sitting in the ceremonial Red Room of the Capitol, Governor Andrew Cuomo said he and lawmakers had come to agreement on an array of big-ticket items, including changes to the state’s system of workers’ compensation, a priority for Republicans, and to its juvenile justice system, a priority for his fellow Democrats; popular issues like expanding ride hailing to upstate New York; and an extension of the so-called millionaire’s tax, on which Mr. Cuomo had hinged much of his 2017 agenda.

 Under the deal announced by the governor, beginning in October 2018, many 16- and 17-year-old offenders would be processed through family court rather than criminal court.Mr. Cuomo said that statewide school aid would increase by $1.1 billion, or 4.4 percent allowing for tuition-free education at state colleges, a larger boost than the governor had proposed but less than the Assembly had hoped for.

The deal also includes a renewal of a lapsed tax-abatement program that spurs affordable housing.

House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes recuses himself from Russia probe.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) temporarily stepped aside Thursday from the committee’s probe into Russian interference in the presidential election, as House investigators look into ethics charges against him.

The House Ethics Committee released a statement Thursday saying it had “determined to investigate” allegations that “Nunes may have made unauthorized disclosures of classified information, in violation of House Rules, law, regulations, or other standards of conduct.”

A month ago, Rep. Devin Nunes was a semi-anonymous member of the House of Representatives, with no national profile and little to distinguish him from his 434 colleagues. But today, he’s the most visible manifestation of the the comprehensive and at times comical effort by the administration, Republicans in Congress, and the conservative media to protect Donald Trump. And it all happened because of a couple of inane and false tweets the president sent.

Read more at WASHINGTON POST